Thern, Fir of Apla: 34 Xiven

The dreams that filled Kayin’s head were usually full of vivid colors, bright lights, and white fog. Fanciful plots of saving villagers from treacherous monarchs, rediscovering places previously forgotten, learning about new worlds, seeing things he never imagined before his sleeping state. The stains of monotony and anxiety left him alone—usually.

The few times he’d been subjected to sleeping after taking a healing potion left him with a dull throng not unlike the one he experienced now.

In this dream, Kayin meandered a dimly lit cobblestone street; the stout buildings, all made of stone, held moss in the corners and cracks as a result from the thick fog that remained whenever Rinesa rested and the moons took watch. This perpetually humid climate made it feel as though he was always sweating, even when the night cooled off like now.

As he walked in the silence, alone, Kayin reflected on himself and his behavior throughout his life. For whatever reason, in this specific moment, Kayin found himself certain with a sinking stomach that Aunt Aayin would be disappointed and ashamed of him. That Dania would look at him like he was some violent, calculating monster. And why wouldn’t she?

He paused on street beneath a lantern that threatened to flicker out as he considered, almost angry at himself, about how he’d grown. As a child, he responded to bullies by becoming a bully, by being mean and defiant. He took his anger and grief out on Sepik and Tidesa, even so much as to permanently harm Sepik when he threw a jar of venomous bugs at her. Every awful feeling he felt, he made sure to return to the world.

Now that he walked in the middle of the night to ask Dania about their childhood, Kayin fully considered turning around. If he asked Dania what she thought of him, it wouldn’t be a true answer. She wasn’t around when he turned his sadness to hate. She wasn’t around when he dragged his feet at Tidesa’s predictions, of the temptations to never go through with anything she said just so he could have a quiet life. If she knew how much he hesitated, how much he tried to hide, would she even still talk to him?

Kayin remained under the street lamp, eventually opting to lean against the rusted iron rather than continue his journey. Even worse, now he contemplated never going to Dania in the first place, just so she wouldn’t have to hear him recount what brought him shame.

Satern, Fir of Febla: 33 Xiven

The mist of the dream cleared, and Kayin found himself clutching a pillow and staring into dawn breaking just through the window of Dhekk’s hut. Already, the images of his dream faded, difficult to remember. All that was left was this awful stone in his stomach. A sadness, like a missed opportunity.

He replaced the thoughts with curiosity, and instead focused on the differences in the hut since he fell asleep. On the table, instead of the three remaining health potions, were two leather bags, open, full of something. In the pulled out chair were two rolls of fabric: bedrolls, Kayin assumed just by the way they were tied.

The sadness ebbed a little stronger, now. Kayin sat up to try and get a better view of what was in the bags. The health potions poked out of one, the other looked like a bundle of herbs were sticking out an inside pouch.

Lounging on the couch, breathing steady and lips set in a permanent grimace, was Dhekk with an arm draped over his face. He didn’t snore, didn’t even bother to take off his shoes before falling asleep. A long sword, unsheathed, rested against the arm of the couch with the hilt just inches away from his fingertips.

Kayin’s eyes drifted to the empty half of the bed he now sat upon. The purposeful dustiness of half of this hut.

It was difficult to imagine these abandoned pieces once loved and used by another. That Dhekk at one point shared this bed and that table with another, kept their books on a bookshelf. Everything was so ready for someone to use it, as if whoever these parts of the hut were made for would walk in and take ownership of them immediately.

But staring at the bed rolls and the food rations covered in simple cloth just emphasized how nothing would be the same. Whatever pain jaded Dhekk to be callous and unsympathetic would be left in this hut, frozen in time and dust.

“If you’re up, let’s get going,” mumbled Dhekk from the couch. He hadn’t moved, or even looked up, but it didn’t surprise Kayin that he could sense a change. Kayin found himself looking at the pink light bathing the supplies on the table.

“Where are we going?” he asked. His voice sounded so distant, hollow. It was naive to hope that Dhekk was going to say they were returning to Yatora to help build it up again. Or that they were going to see Tidesa and Tae and help the survivors, to see who he knew…survived. He tried to think of each person he’d known in his life and the faces of those he remembered in his mind while Dhekk grunted and got to his feet. Vaguely, as if it happened years ago, he recalled recognizing some unmoving shapes while escaping the castle. Teacher Dopi. Other students.

Seeing Dania try to stop a mace from crushing in her skull with her bare hands—

“Yatora wasn’t the only target,” Dhekk said as-matter-of-factually. His words, though shocking, were a welcome distraction from the vivid nightmare playing over and over again in his head. “We’re the cleanup crew for stragglers in Ikan.” Separately, Kayin understood each word, but the way Dhekk strung them together and moved to the bags on the table like he was reciting chores left Kayin struggling to keep up.

“I—Ikan? Where’s that? What happened?”

“Here—” Dhekk threw a wad of cotton clothes at Kayin, which he caught clumsily. “They won’t fit, but it’ll be good enough until, maybe, we get to Urbana. We can get you something more your size there.”

“Urbana,” Kayin echoed, unmoving. He’d seen the city name in passing in books, but nothing more.

“That’s what I said. Go on, put on some proper clothes, put on your shoes. I don’t have any leather armor for you, but maybe your dodging skills have improved since you met a halberd.” Dhekk turned around and began to count things out loud, and Kayin just looked down to the shirt and pants offered to him. These were hanging on the clothesline yesterday, before he fell asleep. Now, when Kayin looked outside, the clothesline was gone. It made Kayin’s heart rate spike.

“Wait—wait, we’re—where’s Ikan, why are—and Urbana—but—” So many thoughts started and stopped, he wouldn’t have blamed Dhekk for losing his patience or trying to make a life lesson out of this, like how he held back the pain medication from before. But Dhekk continued packing as if Kayin never said anything, and simply waited for Kayin to figure out what question to ask. So many flooded to his lips. He white-knuckled the shirt given to him, staring, eyes burning, throat thick. Eventually he stopped trying to form a sentence at all, and just fell silent.

“Alright,” Dhekk said quietly, nodding. “Get dressed. Ask your questions. I’ll just double-check I packed everything.” He broke away from the table to dig through the chest by the door. Kayin sucked in a deep breath, then finally climbed off the bed and disrobed.

The clothes from Wakino were softer and thinner than this brown getup Dhekk gave him, though this new set was far more durable. The shoulder seams went almost a third of the way down his biceps, and the sleeves completely hid his hands unless he rolled them back. The pants weren’t much different. Thankfully, Kayin found a rope belt on the bedside table he used to cinch the pants closer to his own size.

“We’ve got about a day of brisk travel,” Dhekk announced when Kayin finally moved onto putting on his shoes. “That’s all you get to come to terms with….” When Dhekk reappeared by the table, he shrugged. “Well, maybe less than that. You could use a lot more training in probably everything other than herbalism.” From the pocket of one of the backpacks, he pulled out a sheet of folded paper and regarded it carefully.

“A-all of this,” Kayin started quietly, “all of this is predetermined? Like, Tidesa saw this happen?” This question, despite Dhekk’s uncharacteristically patient mood this morning, made the man scowl.

“No.” He looked over to Kayin, gestured for him to get up with a wave of his hand. “Here, grab that short sword and hang it on your belt. This bag’s yours. I’ll show you how to pack the bed roll on it.” When Kayin accepted the sword from Dhekk, the man continued. “I don’t know what Tidesa saw. She doesn’t share that.” When Kayin was ready to pack his bag, Dhekk continued demonstrating how to tie the bedroll to the straps of the bag, without missing a beat in his explanation. “This is a prediction that I made after I studied Xiven’s battle patterns.”

“Who’s that?” Kayin might as well have tried to punch him, with the way Dhekk’s jaw dropped.

“Who—” He choked on his words, even offered Kayin a sarcastic smile. “Well, then!” And even though this wasn’t funny, Dhekk chuckled. “Xiven’s the guy you’re gunna kill some day if everything goes well.”

Perhaps it was supposed to be a joke after all, with the way the air tightened, like he expected Kayin to burst out laughing. The anxiety that tightened in Kayin’s throat remained, unsatisfied.

“I’m not killing anyone,” Kayin decided to say. Dhekk laughed again.

“Even if he’s the one that sent Wakino to erase Yatora off the map?” He was so sure of himself, the way he continued tying his backpack, how he swung it over his shoulder and waited for Kayin to do the same. But Kayin’s feet remained rooted to the floor of this simple, miserable hut.

“I—” His tongue felt swollen. “Tidesa said I don’t hurt anyone….”

“In her vision, yeah.” Dhekk tied his longsword to his hip. “How do you think this whole thing ends?”

“I don’t even know how it started!” Despite Kayin’s protests, Dhekk gestured for him to move; and without any other option, Kayin obeyed. A bag the weight of a small child on his back, a sword, clothes and shoes that didn’t fit, and heart so heavy that it made him drag his feet. “I didn’t have a problem with this Seven—”

“Xiven.”

“This Xiven guy before he tried to kill me. All this because I might try to look at him in some vision an old lady had?”

Dhekk didn’t really look like he listened to a word Kayin said. Or maybe he did, but with each passing second, the man looked around his hut with a sinking expression, as if seeing the sadness of this pathetic room for the first time.

“Yeah,” he said through a sigh, staring at the untouched chair at the dining table. “Bit of a paradox. Tidesa seeing you get involved in this revolution is what involved you in the first place.”

“Revolution?” Kayin echoed with wide eyes. “That’s—I’m not trying to be involved in anything, let alone a revolution!”

“You’re not the first or last to say that,” Dhekk said with a little more force. “Come on, I’ll fill you in on the way.”

When Dhekk closed the door to his hut, the man’s hand hovered over the handle.

“Aren’t you gunna disfigure it?” Kayin asked half-heartedly. “So no one breaks in?” Dhekk considered his words for a moment before taking his hand away.

“No. Guess it’s someone else’s now.” And without looking back to it, Dhekk started to walk toward the sunrise, a little to the south of it. His footsteps sounded heavier than normal.

“You’re never coming back?” Kayin fell into the quick walking pace beside him, periodically turning to watch the hut disappear from view. “How long did you live there?”

Dhekk cleared his throat. “Is my real estate history what we’re discussing, now, or do you want a history lesson of the Emperor you’re going to overthrow?” The question made Kayin trip on his foot a little, but he recovered before Dhekk could make fun of him.

“So,” continued Dhekk, “Emperor Xiven. I don’t know the years, but did you hear about the Purge of Knowledge?” The name didn’t sound familiar, but the concept did.

“Empress D’Accorda?” he guessed. “The one that went power-hungry and tried to erase science?”

“Yes.” Dhekk regarded Kayin with surprise. “Guess you did learn something at that castle.”

“That was from my aunt,” Kayin corrected quietly.

“Well, not long after her came Emperor Xiven. Promises to restore knowledge and all that. Well, instead, he was a little bit—” Based on Dhekk’s exaggerated tone, not a little bit— “a little bit of a supremacist. Came out with a ranking of the different Cigam abilities, tried to fixate a lot of—a lot of stuff around it. Value, rights to own property or get married to specific people, the right to a trade.”

“And nothing-havers?” Kayin prompted, though he could already guess the answer. If Yatora was built to get away from Emperor Xiven and his laws, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine any sort of terrible fate for just being born a certain way.

“Depended on the city,” was Dhekk’s careful answer. “But it wasn’t the same everywhere. And it’s not the same now. The last…I don’t know, fifteen or so years, there’s been….” Dhekk cocked an eyebrow, stifled a smirk. “There’s been some troublemakers challenging Xiven’s laws. It’s easier over here, on Ronia.” He gestured to the forest around them. “You can’t physically get any further from Xiven than here.” This explanation only made Kayin’s stomach twist into knots.

“We’re so far away from Xiven and he can still just tell someone to go kill people?” Dhekk let the question sit in the morning air, let the silence fill with chirping gerries and scampering edia. Kayin decided to ask another, “Isn’t this guy, like, a hundred and fifty or something? How’s he not dead?” He held up a finger to show Dhekk he had more to say. “Or, if it’s been that long, and no one has ever seen him until I go see him, how do we know it’s all the same person? Or that he’s even a he?” Dhekk looked almost annoyed.

“Is that what you’re gathering from this?” he asked with a flat tone. “I don’t care who it is. No one cares who Xiven actually is. We just want him and all his followers gone.” Dhekk cast a glance over to Kayin only to make sure he kept up through the thickening foliage. “Put a physical face to a concept and suddenly they’re easier to defy. Understand?”

“I guess.” Kayin let the crunching of the leaves and shuffling of the mushrooms take over the conversation as he digested this newest lecture. None of it seemed real. Even his dream from last night, walking in the fog and feeling bad about himself, felt more realistic than walking through this forest with Dhekk.

“Dhekk,” he asked after a few minutes, “why us? Why not someone else?” The man’s sigh was the only indication that he’d heard the question for a good while. Kayin tried to look at his face, to try and garner what sort of thoughts were running through his head.

“Me,” he started slowly, “I chose this. And you?” Another pause. “I have a feeling you’ll choose this too, when it comes to it.”